Theatre Santa Fe

Susan Gardner and Jeffrey Thomson

Looking forward to the launch of Jeffrey Thomson's memoir FRAGILE, with mine, LIFTED TO THE WIND. Jeff will visit Santa Fe and we'll read at Teatro Paraguas, October 25, 6 pm.

Susan Gardner

Santa Fe-based Red Mountain Press, now in its tenth year of operation, will launch two major books on Sunday, October 25, 2015 at 6 pm. The event will take place at Teatro Paraguas, 3504 Calle Marie, Santa Fe.

Susan Gardner, author of six books and founding editor of Red Mountain Press, will launch Lifted to the Wind Poems

1974-2015. Internationally known as a poet, painter and photographer, the author presents in this book a four-decade retrospective of her poetry, some originally composed in Spanish and in the language of Japanese calligraphy. Section breaks are illuminated with ink drawings by the author. Lifted to the Wind has been called “painterly snapshots inviting us to view a world unmediated” that “probe the complexities and contradictions of human experience” and that “open our peripheral vision” to “the nuances of place.”

Ms Gardner has lived and worked in several parts of the world with numerous exhibitions, lectures and readings to her credit including the Cam Memorial Lecture at the New York Public Library. She has been a house builder, landscape designer, teacher and scholarly researcher.

Jeffery Thomas, poet, memoirist, traveler and teacher, will be launching his memoir entitled fragile. This book of stories and ruminations carries us from the lush tropics of Costa Rica, through the rivers and deserts of the American and Alaskan west, to the cities of old Europe. It’s an eclectic meditation on place, poetry and mortality that

becomes at once beautiful and nearly tragic. It’s been said of this book “the author writes with a clarity of vision and profundity of thought that will leave you breathless, humbled and deeply inspired.” It’s a book “to be read in a gulp and then to be savored in small bites for years to come.”

Thomas, author of several previous books, has been an NEA fellow and a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar. He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Main Farmington.

In her latest book, Lifted to the Wind, Susan Gardner brings us a four-decade retrospective of her poetry, some composed originally in Spanish and in Japanese calligraphy.

In addition to being a poet, literary editor and the co-publisher of Red Mountain Press, she is a well-established painter and photographer. Her aesthetic sensibilities in the visual arts are easily evident in her poetry. The author “celebrates the vibrancy and vision of a lifetime, paying homage to the quiet motions of what’s alive around us.” She gives us a true reckoning of what is and an artist’s look at what might be.

“a rich collection of poems…. probe the complexities and contradictions of human experience—art, love, loneliness, eros, even war—even as they portray the natural world with vividness and precision…. Yet they don’t stop there—these poems take us to another dimension: they lift us to the wind.“– Gordon Ball, author of East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg

Poems inspired by art, a process called ekphrasis, are legion…. But what happens when poet and painter inhabit the same body? Well, Susan Gardner’s work is what happens. She invites you to see a poem and, I suspect, read a painting. The poems are invitations to set aside your narrative expectations and let the mind rest, take in an image, a detail, participate in a meditative process, a sort of sensory and spiritual inventory. – Gary Geddes, author of What Does A House Want? and winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region) and Gabriela Mistral Prize.

fragile

Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor and is the author of multiple books including Birdwatching in Wartime, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and From the Fishouse. He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University. He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.

Life and death and poetry, love and loss, nature and spirit, joy and risk, delight in small things and large--these are among the pleasures of fragile, a book to read in a gulp, and then to be savored in small bites for years to come. Jeff Thomson is a poet of the mind but also a poet of the heart, both figurative and literal, and here he proves himself a memoirist of the heart and mind as well. Fragile marks new territory for this accomplished poet, new treasure for his readers, new ways to think about our world. -- Bill Roorbach, author of The Remedy or Love